International Women’s Day is upon us, dear readers! The March 8th holiday isn’t something we celebrate with much gusto here in the states, but it’s celebrated heartily in other corners of the world. We first learned about Women’s Day from an ex-pat friend who lives in Italy, where Italian regazzi give their ladies yellow mimosas as they gather for women-only dinners and parties. Anyone who’s seen an episode of Sex and the City or ever happened across a huge group of girls at the bar finds this commonplace, but in Italy, ladies night is not so. In Poland Women’s Day is similar to American Mother’s Day; in Pakistan it’s a day to commemorate the struggle for women’s rights.

Women’s Day arose after an important protest on March 8, 1908, when 15,000 women took to the streets of New York, marching for voting rights, shorter hours, and better pay. The Socialist Party of America declared National Women’s Day to be February 28 the following year.

Women’s Day went global in 1910 when the delegates to the 2nd Annual Working Women’s Conference in Copenhagen unanimously approved an International Women’s Day. The first International Women’s Day was celebrated on March 19, 1911, with more than a million men and women attending rallies around the globe, campaigning for women’s rights to vote, work, and hold public office. The holiday was moved to March 8 two years later and has been celebrated then ever since. In 1975 the holiday received official sanction from the U.N. and has been an officially sponsored holiday ever since.

This International Women’s Day, why not celebrate with a cocktail from the “Lady” category? White Lady, Chorus Lady, Creole Lady – there are several but a Pink Lady will always be my go to.

Pink Lady

1.5 oz Plymouth gin

.5 oz applejack

.5 oz fresh lemon juice

.5 oz grenadine

1 egg white

Combine ingredients without ice in a cocktail shaker and shake vigorously for 20 seconds. Fill the shaker with ice and shake shake shake until frothy and delicious.

It’s easy to get the blues this time of year when the only holiday on the horizon is Valentine’s Day. You need a cocktail. Thus we bring you THE SNOW BALL—a LUPEC Boston Winter Prom. On January 30 the ladies of LUPEC Boston will transform the back room at Silvertone into a winter wonderland for a magical evening of dancing, drinks and awkward prom photos to benefit local women’s charity On the Rise.

While former prom kings and queens are reliving their wonder years,

those among us who skipped prom because they were too busy listening to punk music and being vegan (cough BOURBON BELLE cough) will have a chance to enjoy Prom 2.0—complete with spiked punch, cocktails and hands below the waist.

Entry to THE SNOW BALL costs $10 and will be granted on a first come, first served basis. All of the ticket proceeds will be donated to On the Rise. Guests who bring clothing and other items deemed acceptable for donation (visit lupecboston.com for specifics) will be given tickets for complimentary drinks commensurate with their donation. Additional spiked punch and cocktails that commemorate proms throughout the ages will be available for purchase for $5-$7 each. Light appetizers will be served.

Josh Childs and Beau Sturm will guest bartend and TJ Connelly, the locally famous DJ for the Boston Red Sox and co-founder of getonthebar.com will provide musical entertainment. Guests will have an opportunity to have their moment memorialized in THE SNOW BALL photo booth.

As with all LUPEC events, dressing up is encouraged and guests are invited to come in creative formal prom attire. And yes, a prom king and queen will be crowned, so dress to impress.

As avid followers of LUPEC both here and via our social media channels (@lupecboston) know we travel far and wide for the cocktail. Once a year we pursue our love of libations at Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans and the recently established Manhattan Cocktail Classic in New York City. More recently we’ve traveled to further reaches of the country, exotic places such as the Bay Area in California or the even more rugged Portlandia, to partake of their citywide Cocktail Week festivals. We can’t thank these cities enough for blazing the trail, yet all the while we’ve mused,

“when is Boston going to get it’s own cocktail week? New York beat us to the punch, obvi, but Portlandia?

Really?”

Then, like magic, the Greater Boston Beverage Society (GBBS) formed. This not-for-profit organization has been developed to “preserve and promote Boston’s cocktail and hospitality culture and spirits history while supporting local and national beverage industry related charities.” Could there be a more noble society? And while they’re at it, the GBBS will develop The Boston Cocktail Summit, a kick-ass cocktail festival of national scale slated for October 4-6, 2012.

In the meantime, as preview for the Boston Cocktail Summit, the GBBS will throw a wild party called Shakin’ It Up on Sunday, November 13th from 5-11 p.m. at House of Blues. The event will be an intimate VIP-style gala where attendees will enjoy cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, comedy, live music and the Left Bank vs. Right Bank Bartender Competition, where Boston and Cambridge bar stars will take go head-to-head in a friendly battle to determine which side of the river is home to the Boston-area’s best bartenders. Comedian Joey Carroll, Prince Tribute Band Lovesexy, and the ever energetic Dawg and Poni Show will perform. In addition to this madness there will be all the free cocktails you can drink (uh-oh), a sick silent auction and delicious hors d’ouevres.

Could there be a more appropriate cocktail to sip at the dawn of summer than the Daisy, a cool and refreshing drink named for the hardy, innocent flower?

Two versions of this drink were in wide circulation by the time Prohibition rolled around in 1919. The early version appears in the 1876 edition of Jerry Thomas’ The Bon Vivant’s Companion, and is made with spirit (brandy, whisky, gin, rum) lemon, gum syrup, orange cordial and finished with a splash of soda. As cocktail historian David Wondrich chronicles in his book Imbibe, over time that drink evolved into “something of a dude’s drink, a little bit of fanciness em-pinkened with grenadine … and tricked out with fruit.”

Shortly after Prohibition ended recipes for a “Tequila Daisy” started popping up from Mexico to New York State. The drink may have been the earliest incarnation of a popular modern cocktail whose name translates to “Daisy” in Spanish: the Margarita.

The “dude’s drink” is what we suggest sippin’ with gin this month, but please note: all incarnations of the Daisy are delicious. Sip any one you like while soaking up the sun on a patio, stoop, or porch as you toast to summer finally arriving.

GIN DAISYRecipe from GOOD SPIRITS by A.J. Rathbun

1.5 oz gin
.5 oz lemon
.25 oz simple syrup
.25 oz grenadine
Club soda

Fill a highball glass with crushed ice. Add gin, lemon, simple and grenadine and stir twice. Top off with soda water. Garnish with a sprig of fresh mint and orange slice.
CIN-CIN!

*Recent ruminations from LUPEC Boston, as previously published in The Weekly Dig.

We’re thrilled to celebrate history-making forebroads in honor of Women’s History Month this March. What could be better than raising a glass (or three) to a woman who made history this month?

On March 7th, Kathryn Bigelow became the first female director to win two of the most coveted Oscars the academy has to offer, “best director” and “best film,” for her low-budget, low-grossing, critically acclaimed drama, The Hurt Locker. (It also managed to beat out a little ditty directed by her ex-husband that cost over 15 times as much to make and grossed almost 100 times as much at the box office.) Bigelow is the first woman to take home the best director title in the ceremony’s 82-year existence.

LUPEC Boston was shocked to learn how sorely underrepresented women are among Hollywood’s power elite. Dr. Martha Lauzen of San Diego State explains the phenomenon in her regularly published “Celluloid Ceiling” survey: Of the top 250 grossing movies this year, just 16 percent of directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers and editors were women. Female directors represented 7 percent (the same percentage they held back in 1987, when hair bands and acid-wash jeans seemed like a good idea), and women writers make up only 8 percent.

Nevertheless, 2009 was heralded as “The Year of the Woman” in Hollywood, in part because two of the year’s top-grossing films (New Moon and The Proposal) had female leads, and also because some high-profile female directors had new releases, including Nora Ephron, Jane Campion and Lone Scherfig (whose An Education was also a best picture nominee). But Bigelow was the fourth woman to even be nominated for best director since the advent of the academy.

Manohla Dargis points out in a recent New York Times story that the win is more than a milestone; it’s “also helped dismantle stereotypes about what types of films women can and should direct.” Bigelow generally makes “kinetic and thrilling movies about men and codes of masculinity set in worlds of violence.”

This season, Bigelow’s gripping Hurt Locker swept the awards circuit, racking up trophies from the Directors Guild of America for “outstanding direction,” a nomination for a Golden Globe, a “best direction” award from BAFTA, nine Oscar nominations and six Oscar victories.

Today we raise a glass to Kathryn Bigelow, who is accused of making movies “like a man” nearly as often as we are accused of drinking like one.

*LUPEC Boston’s latest ruminations, in case you missed ‘em in this week’s Dig.

by Pink Lady

Our big fall fundraiser, the LUPEC Boston Tiki Bash, is just a few weeks away, and LUPEC’s thinking Tiki! Last week we discussed the Mai Tai, that simple and delicious blend of dark rum, orgeat, lime, and curacao that was a cornerstone of the Tiki craze. Did Donn Beach invent this drink, or Trader Vic? Who knows. This week, we turn our attention to a considerably more complex concoction, the Zombie. We’re certain Donn Beach invented this one – and took the original recipe with him to the grave.

As the story goes, Donn Beach (née Ernest Beaumont-Gantt) invented the Zombie in the 1930s for an aviophobic friend taking a tipple at Don the Beachcomber’s before a flight to San Francisco…or was it a friend trying to overcome a hangover before an important business meeting? In any case, the guest had three of these high-test concoctions before (presumably) stumbling off for his flight/meeting/what have you. He returned a few days later to report: the drinks made him feel like the living dead for days thereafter. And the Zombie was born.

The Zombie became a signature cocktail at the Hurricane Bar at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City and enjoyed great popularity there. The drink went on to become a staple of Tiki joints that sprang up across the US, such as Trader Vic’s and, of course, Don the Beachcomber’s, where a 2-drink maximum policy was instituted.

Donn Beach was notoriously secretive about his cocktail recipes, creating special mixes for his bartenders that boasted numbers rather than names, keeping even the staff in the dark about his signature drinks. Imitations emerged in other Tiki joints, and Donn himself very likely noodled with the original recipe over time to accommodate new products or lack of available ingredients in certain markets. Countless recipes now exist, making it virtually impossible to pin down an original with which to craft a true artifact version for home consumption.

Tiki expert Jeff “Beachbum” Berry appears to have come the closest in excavating an original recipe through interviews with former staff from Don the Beachcomber’s. Poring over personal notes kept by these waiters and bartenders from their days behind the stick, several are published in his book, Sippin’ Safari. A variation via Dale DeGroff is below.

Combine with crushed ice in a cocktail shaker and shake well. Pour into a chimney glass, topping with crushed ice to fill the glass. Garnish with mint.

DONN’S MIX #1

2 parts fresh squeezed grapefruit juice

1 part Cinnamon Syrup (below)

Combine the grapefruit juice with syrup and shake well. Use immediately, or store covered in the refrigerator for up to 2 days.

CINNAMON SYRUP

5 cinnamon sticks, each about 2 inches long

20 oz. bottled or filtered water

1 quart sugar

Break the cinnamon sticks into pieces to create more surface area. Put the cinnamon, water, and sugar in a large saucepan over low heat. Stir until all the sugar is dissolved, and then reduce the heat to very low and simmer for 30 minutes. Let cool completely, then bottle; keep covered in refrigerator for up to 1 week.